“…as troubling as the death of print journalism may be for our collective civic and political lives, it may have an even more lasting impact on our literary culture. For more than a century, newspaper jobs provided vital early paychecks, and even more vital training grounds, for generations of American writers as different as Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Maynard, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tony Earley. Just as importantly, reporting jobs taught nonfiction writers from Rachel Carson to Michael Pollan how to ferret out hidden information and present it to readers in a compelling narrative.

This reminds me of a story John Updike told at Nasher Salon in Dallas in 2008. (I’ve appended Chris Vognar’s account of the evening at the end of this post.) Updike, one of the most brilliant literary minds of the century, recounted how he got his start as a writer: He published a poem. In a magazine. For milkmen. And was paid $50.

Our world today does not have many publications that would be willing to pay a young poet that much — there are probably about as many of them as there are milkmen. And you can argue that we don’t need magazines or milkmen, when Walmart can sell you a gallon or 70 at 3 a.m. and anybody with a computer can bang out a few lines that will reach 800 million people on Facebook alone.

But 50 years from now, when our women and men of letters are people who learned to write verse 140 characters at a time and were taught that “news” is just something you cut and paste from another website, I wonder whether we will think this was such a good thing.

Here’s that Updike story:

From the Jan 11, 2008 editions of The Dallas Morning News:

A modest Updike enchants

By CHRIS VOGNAR
Staff Critic

His wise, angular face looks like something that belongs on a monument, perhaps some kind of literary Mount Rushmore. He’s won more prizes than most readers can even name. But more than once during his one-hour talk Thursday night at the Nasher Salon, John Updike expressed a sense of wonderment at his exalted place in American letters.

“I’m fortunate to be able to make a living at this game,” he explained at one point, leaving other writers in the audience to only wonder: If he’s fortunate, then what am I?

Sitting across from moderator and WFAA-TV (Channel 8) news anchor John McCaa, Mr. Updike, a spry 74, exuded what you’d be tempted to call false modesty. Except it didn’t feel particularly false. It’s not that he doesn’t know how good he is; after all, the man isn’t stupid. But he’s never been a Norman Mailer type, crowing over his achievements like a glory-seeking missile. He still seems a little in awe of the craft he has mastered, and he loves books so much that listening to him talk makes you want to sit down and read forever.

A quiet charmer whose slightest utterance brought appreciative ripples of laughter from the sold-out Nasher crowd, Mr. Updike spoke with the same tone that defines the works of criticism, mostly published during his careerlong relationship with The New Yorker, collected in the new Due Considerations. You can tell when he doesn’t really like something, but he’s never going to get nasty about it.

When Mr. McCaa read a question from the audience – which Updike book might the author recommend to President Bush? – the guest of honor started by reminiscing about the moment the president presented him with the National Medal for the Humanities in 2003. He marveled over how difficult it must be to present a positive public face at all times.

Then, gradually, came the answer: Rabbit Is Rich. “It’s not one of my longer novels,” he explained. “And it’s a pretty easy read.”

Somehow it didn’t even sound like an insult.

In an age when slash-and-burn literary critics like Dale Peck grab what few headlines book reviews get, Mr. Updike, 74, still writes with a combination of gentility and generosity. Perhaps this is because he actually knows how hard it is to write novels. He’s hardly the type to lord his two Pulitzers (for Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest), but lord knows he could.

But you never get the feeling Mr. Updike is slumming when he turns to criticism. The essays and reviews in Due Considerations convey the passions of a polymath, whether the subject is literary biography (he’s not a big fan), artists’ late works or vacationing in China.

His recent New Yorker review on The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978 becomes a grounded philosophical overview of photography itself. He’s an ace at using a book to launch a broader discussion. He’s also the kind of critic who can wring elegant prose from seemingly any assignment or subject.

Most of the Nasher discussion was given over to fiction, the kind of writing for which Mr. Updike is best known and which he speaks of with typical grace. “I was always drawn to this notion of a writer testifying to the way things are, thus enlightening us,” he said. “You come away with a sense of your own humanity. Writing fiction is a way of saying your 70 years cooped inside your own skin is important.”

Another questioner asked Mr. Updike to compare his writing to the play of Ted Williams, a man Mr. Updike has written about more than once (including an appreciation in Due Considerations).

“He didn’t just play baseball,” Mr. Updike said. “He played it with style and passion. He was unashamed of his wish to be the best. It would be nice to bring to writing the kind of intensity and single-mindedness that Ted did to baseball.”

He said it as if he hadn’t long ago done just that.

(2008 file photo by John F. Rhodes)

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News, reviews, nuggets and tidbits from the local arts scene, including literature, theater, classical music, opera, dance and the visual arts.